1 De dign. et augnt. i. ii. chaps. 1-2.
566 LOGIC PART institutum nostrum" which was concerned only with the cognitio consequentiarum, that is to say, science and philosophy.1 Locke is not less anti- historical than Descartes and Spinoza, and even Leibnitz, who was very learned, did not recognize the autonomy of historical work, and continued to consider it as directed towards utilitarian and moral ends. Treatises Reflections upon history, suggested rather by on historical, r. -, Ir1...art in the the professional needs of historians than by a Renaissance...
need for systematization and a profound philo sophy, continued on their way, almost apart from the philosophy of the time. From the Renaissance onwards, treatises on historical art were multiplied at the hands of Robortelli, Atanagi, Riccoboni, Foglietta, Beni, Mascardi, and of many others, even of non-Italians; but their discussions usually centred upon elocution, upon the use of ornament and of digressions, upon arguments worthy of history, and the like. Among these writers of treatises we must note (here as well as in the history of Poetics and of Rhetoric) Francesco Patrizio or Patrizzi (1560), for his ideas, sometimes acute, sometimes incoherent and extravagant. Overcoming one of the prejudices of empiricism, he justly wished 1 De homine, chap. 9.
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 567 that the concept of history should not be limited to military enterprises and political negotiations alone, and that it should be extended to all the doings of men. With a like superiority to empirical views, he found historical representa tion not only in words, but also in painting and sculpture — (our times, so fruitful of histories graphically illustrated, should admit that he was to some extent right), and he did not accept chronological limits. He also insisted upon the mode of testing historical truth and upon the degree of credibility of witnesses. But he became extravagant, when he admitted a history of the future, calling the prophets as witnesses, and incoherent, when he both denied and affirmed the moral end of history.1 Another form of empiricism, certainly more Treatises upon method.
important, the methodological, which dealt with the canons and criteria to be borne in mind in making historical researches, accompanied the often rhetorical empiricism of writers of treatises. The reference to the duties of the historian in one place in Cicero was repeated and commented upon by all. But this treatment became gradually more wide, as we see especially in 1 E. Maffei, / trattati delF arte storica del Rinascimento fino al secolo XVII, Napoli, 1897.
568 LOGIC PART the work of Vossius, Ars historica sive de historia et historiae natura, historiaeque scribendae prae- ceptis commentatio (1623). The term " Historic " dates from this book and is formed on the analogy of Logic, Poetic, Rhetoric, etc., and applied to the theory or Logic of history. Gervinus (1837) and Droysen (1858) tried to bring this term again into vogue. The methodological treat ment of historical research was more widely developed in the scholastic manuals of Logic of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the Logica seu ars ratiocinandi of Leclerc (I692).1 With these canons arising in the field of research and historical criticism, we may opportunely compare those concerning the mode of valuing and weighing evidence, which were gradually unified in juridical literature. Methodo logical treatment has also progressed in our times, in manuals such as those of Droysen, of Bernheim, of Langlois-Seignobos; but the general tendency of these works (as is also evident from their apparatus in heuristic, in criticism, in comprehension and in exposition) remains and must remain altogether empirical. The first philosopher who gave to History 1 G. Gentile, " Contribution a 1'histoire de la methode historique," in the Revue de synthese historique, v. pp. 129-152.
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 569 an importance equal to Philosophy was Vico, The theory with his already-mentioned union of philosophy and philology, of truth and certainty, and with the example that he offered of a philosophic system, which is also a history of the human race: an "eternal ideal history, upon which the histories of nations run in time'.' For this reason (not less than from his strong consciousness of the difference in character between the meta physical concept and mathematical abstraction) Vico was an Anti-Cartesian. He stands between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the opposer of the past and of the future, or of the nearest past and the nearest future. Indeed, there is even in Vico a trace of that vice which arises from a too indiscriminate identification of philosophy and history, which certainly con stitute an identity, but an identity which is a synthesis and therefore a distinction. Hence, when no account is taken of this, the substantial truth affirmed loses its balance in philosophism and mythologism. The real epochs of Vico are too philosophic and have in them something forced; the ideal epochs are too historical and have in them something of exuberance and of contingency. The real epochs are not exempt from philosophistic caprices; the ideal sometimes 570 LOGIC PART become converted into a mythology (though full of profound meanings). For this reason, it has been possible now to praise, now to blame him for having invented the Philosophy of history. There is indeed in him, here and there, some hint of a philosophy of history sensu deteriori, but above all he is the great philosopher and the great historian. Theanti- As the eighteenth century did not really know historicism of the the concept of philosophy, so was it ignorant of century tnat of history \ its anti-historicism has become ana Kant. J proverbial. There appeared at this time some celebrated theoretic manifestations of historical scepticism, of the negation of history, which seemed, as before to Sextus Empiricus, a thing without art and without method (a-reyyov...KOI e/c 7-779 d/AeOoSov uX?;? rvy^dvovaav). The book of Melchior Delfico, Pensieri suit Istoria e sulC in- certezza ed inutilita della medesima.(1808), is one of the last manifestations of this sort. But all the thinkers of that time were of this opinion; even Kant, in whose wide culture were certainly two lacunae — artistic and historical. And if in the course of elaborating his system he was led by logical necessity to meditate upon art, or rather upon beauty, he never paid serious atten tion to the problem of history.
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 571 Yet Kant is the true, though unconscious creator of the new Logic of history. To him of the a priori of the a priori belongs the merit, not only of having shown the synthesis. importance of the historical judgment, but also of having given the formula of the identity of philo sophy and history in the a priori synthesis. The logical revolution effected by Kant consists in this: that he perceives and proclaims that to know is not to think the concept abstractly, but to think the concept in the intuition, and that consequently to think is to judge. The theory of the judgment takes the place of that of the con cept and is truly the theory of the concept, in so far as it becomes concrete. What does it matter that he is not aware of all this and that instead of referring the logical a priori synthesis to history, he refers it to the sciences, constituting it an instrument not of history, but of the sciences; and that instead of exhausting knowledge in the a priori synthesis, he leaves outside of it true knowledge as an unattainable, or theoretically unattainable ideal? What does it matter that when confronted with the problem of the judg ment of existence, he solves it like Gaunilo and withdraws existence from thought, removing from it the character of predicate and of concept and making of it a position or an imposition ab extra?
572 LOGIC PART 572 LOGIC PART What does it matter that his history is without historical developments and wanting even in knowledge of the history of philosophy, and that in the parts of the so-called system that he has developed (for example, in the doctrine of virtue and of rights) there reigns the most squalid crowd of abstractions and of anti-historical de terminations? What does it matter that we find the man of the eighteenth century on every page of his book, and that he was absolutely without sympathy for the tendencies of thought of the Hamanns and of the14 Herders? There always remains the fact that the a priori synthesis carried in itself even that which its discoverer ignored or denied. The theory It would be preferable to say that all Kant's in Hegei. failures in recognition and all his lacunae are certainly of importance, just because they pro vided his followers with a new problem, and generated by way of contrariety the philosophy of Schelling and the historical philosophy of Hegel. Not even in Hegel is there to be found the elaboration of the doctrine of the individual judgment, nor is its identity with that of the concept explicitly recognized. But in Hegel not only do we find ourselves in the full historical atmosphere (suffice it to recall his histories of art, HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 573 of religion, of philosophy and of the general development of the human race, which are still the most profound and the most stimulating writings upon history that exist); but these historical elucidations are all connected with the fundamental thought of his Logic: the concept is immanent and is divided in itself in the judgment, of which the general formula is that the individual is the universal, the subject is the predicate, every judgment is a judgment of the universal, and the universal is the dialectic of opposites. For this reason also, we find in the works of Hegel a historical method far in advance of all his pre decessors and also (save in a few points) of his successors. He maintained, with much vigour, the necessity of the interpretative and rational element in history; and to those who demanded that a historian should be disinterested, in the same way as a magistrate who judges a case, he replied that since the magistrate has nevertheless his interest, that for the right, so has the historian also his interest, namely that for truth.1 Hegel's defect in relation to history (as was w. von Vico's before him but on a larger scale) was the philosophist error, which led him to the design of a philosophy of history, rising above history 1 Encycl. § 549; and all the introduction to the Phil. d. Gesch.
574 LOGIC PART 574 LOGIC PART properly so-called. The psychological explana tions of this strange duplication, together with its philosophic motives, have already been adduced.1 Wilhelm von Humboldt certainly alluded to Hegel and intended to oppose him in this respect in his discourse concerning the office of the historian (1820). Here the method of the writer of history was likened to that of the artist. Fancy is as necessary to the historian as to the poet, Humboldt said, not in the sense of free fancy, but as the gift of reconstruction and of association. History, like art, seeks the true form of events, the pure and concrete form of real facts. But whereas art hardly touches the fugitive manifes tations of the real, in order to rise above all reality, history attaches itself to those manifesta tions and becomes totally immersed in them. The ideas which the historian elaborates are not introduced by him into history, but discovered in reality itself, of which they constitute the essence. They are the outcome of the fulness of events, not of an extrinsic addition, as in what is called philosophic or theological history (Philosophy of history). Certainly, universal history is not intelligible without a world -order (eine Welt- regierung). But the historian possesses no instru- 1 See above, Part III. Chap. III.
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 575 ment which enables him directly to examine this design, and every effort in which he attempts to reach it, makes him fall into empty and arbitrary teleologism. He must, on the contrary, proceed by deducing it from facts examined in their indi viduality; for the end of history can only be the realization of the idea, which humanity must represent from all sides and in all the different modes in which finite form can ever be united with the idea. The course of events can only be interrupted when idea and form are no longer able to interpenetrate one another.1 The protest was justified, not indeed against the fundamental doctrine of Hegel, but rather against one of its particular aberrations. But the protest was inferior in the determinateness of its concepts to the philosophy which it opposed. Even in the healthy tendency of the Hegelian doctrine, ideas should not be introduced but discovered in history. And if it sometimes seemed that the Philosophy of history introduced them from with out, this happened because in that case true ideas were not employed and the concreteness of the fact was not respected.
The theory of the individual judgment has F.
1 " Ceber die Aufgabe des Geschichtsschreibers, " in the Transactions of the Academy of Berlin, 1882, and reprinted in W. W.
576 LOGIC PART 576 LOGIC PART made no progress in the Logics of the nineteenth century, save for certain timely explanations concerning the existential character of the judgment given by Brentano and his school. Brentano, who is an Anti- Kantian, considers the period inaugurated by Kant to be that of a new philosophical decadence. Yet notwith standing his sympathy for mediaeval scholasticism and for modern psychologism, he has too much philosophic acumen to remain fixed in the one or to lose himself in the other. Thus the tripartition of the forms of the spirit, maintained by him,1 beneath the external appearance of a renovated Cartesianism, bears traces of the abhorred criti cism, romanticism and idealism. The first form, the pure representation, answers to the aesthetic moment; the second, the judgment, is the primitive logical form answering to the Kantian a priori synthesis; and love and hatred, the third form, which contains will and feeling, is not without precedent among the Post-Kantians themselves. He reasonably criticizes the various more or less mechanical theories, which treat the judgment as a connection of representations or a subsumption of concepts, and defends the idiogenetic against allogenetic theories. But 1 F. Brentano, Psychologic, Leipzig, 1874.
IV HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 577 when he tries to prove that the judgment " A is " cannot be resolved into " A " and " is " (that is, into A and existence), because the concept of existence is found in the judgment and does not precede it, he goes beyond the mark. For the concept of existence certainly does not precede, but neither does it follow the judgment: it is contemporaneous; that is to say, it exists only in the judgment, like the category in the a priori synthesis. And he goes beyond the mark again, when he makes existentiality the character of the judgment, whereas existentiality is only one of the categories and consequently, if it be in dispensable for the constitution of the judgment, it is not sufficient for any judgment, since for every judgment there is necessary the inner determination of the judgment as essence and as existence. For the rest, this is easily seen in the theories of his school, which end by establishing a double degree or form of judgment, thus creating a duality that cannot be maintained.1 In any case, in the researches of Brentano and his followers, there is affirmed the need for a complete doctrine of the judgment and of its relation (which in our opinion is one of identity) 1 F. Hildebrand, Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schliisseu, Vienna, 1891.
578 LOGIC PART with the doctrine of the concept. The theories of values and of judgments of values already mentioned, in their investigation of the universal or valuative element, express the same need from another point of view; although none of them discovers, by recalling the Kantian-Hegelian tradition, that values are immanent in single facts, and that consequently judgments of value, as judgments, are the same as individual judgments. controversies Enquiries concerning the character of history concernini the nature, may assist the constitution of a theory of inof history.
dividual judgments. These enquiries have never enjoyed so much favour as in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Naturalism or positiv ism has provided the incentive to such enquiries, for it brought into being the problem: "whether history is or is not a (natural) science," by its attempt to violate and pervert history by raising it (as they said, and it must have sounded ironical) to the rank of a science, that is to say, of a naturalistic science. There were two answers to the problem: (i) that history is a science sui generis (not natural); (2) that it is, not a science, but an art, a particular form of art, the repre sentation of the real.
The first of these answers is to be found in the HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 579 work of Rickert (1896-1902), cited above, and Xtnopol.
in the almost contemporary work of Xenopol History as science of the (I899).1 Rickert's work is that of a professional ^dividual. philosopher, and a follower of Windelband; the other, of an intelligent historian, who is somewhat lacking in equipment as a philosopher. Rickert, after having examined the naturalistic process and demonstrated how it finds a limit in individuality, next examines historical process, which takes possession of the field that naturalism is obliged to relinquish. Xenopol upholds the same dis tinction, of a double series of sciences, historical and theoretical, of phtnomenes successifs and of phdnomenes de rtpttition. To both these writers (besides the merit of having revived, in opposition to naturalism, the consciousness of individuality) belongs that of having understood that the field of history extends far beyond that ordinarily assigned to it, and embraces every manifestation of the real. But merely successive phenomena or phenomena of mere repetition do not exist and are not conceivable; nor is it true that the sciences dealing with the former stop at differences of fact and neglect identities. For how could a history of political facts be written, if no attention were 1 Les Principes fondarnentaux de fhistoire, Paris, 1899; 2nd ed., entitled La Theorie de Vhistoire, Paris, 1908.
PART 580 LOGIC paid to the constant political nature of those facts? or of poetry, without paying attention to the constant poetical nature of all its historical manifestations? or of zoological species, without paying attention to the constant nature of the organism and of life? The distinction, therefore, as formulated by X^nopol, is little enough elabor ated, not to say crude. Rickert, for his part, falls into a like error, owing to his failure to respect that intuitive and individual element, which he had previously admitted. Hence the serious contradictions, in which he becomes involved in the second part of his book. After having defined the concept as peculiar to the naturalistic method, he eventually claims to find also a species of concept in the procedure of history, which he had distinguished from and opposed to the former: a historical concept, wrhich is obtained by cutting out, in the extensive and intensive infinity of facts, certain groups, which are placed in relation by means of practical criteria of importance and of value. It is true (he writes) that the concept has been defined by us as something of universal content; but now we wish precisely to surpass this one-sidedness, and therefore in the interest of logic it is justifiable to give the name concepts also to the thoughts which express the historical essence HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 581 of reality.1 It is worse still when he attempts to explain the ineradicable intuitive and aesthetic element of historical narration; for holding art to be without truth and of use only in producing some sort of artistic (hedonistic?) effect, he re cognizes that element as a means of endowing narration with liveliness and of exciting the fancy.2 A consequence of this lack of understanding of the aesthetic function has been the laborious and vain attempt which Rickert is obliged to make, to determine to what personages and facts we are to attribute objective historical value.
The second answer, that history is an art (that History as art. is to say, a special form of art, which is distinguished from the rest, in that it represents, not the possible but the real), avoids the above-mentioned difficulties. It distinguishes clearly between the natural sciences and history; it explains the ineliminability and the function of the intuitive element in history, and does not lose itself in the vain search for the distinctive criterion between historical facts and non-historical facts, because it declares that all facts are historical.3 But it must in any case be corrected and completed with 1 Grenzen d. naturwiss. Begriffsbildung, pp. 328-29.
3 This is the thesis maintained in 1893 by the author of this book, cf. also B. Croce, " Les Etudes relatives a la theorie de 1'histoire en Italic," in the Revtie de synthhe historique, v. pp. 257-259.
LOGIC PART IV Other controversies concerning history.
the conclusion that the representation of the real is no longer simple representation or simple art, but the interpenetration of thought and representa tion, that is to say, philosophy-history.1 All the other controversies recently engaged upon, relate to the criteria of interpretation, or the system of ideas, which serves as the basis of any sort of historical narration. Thus there have been disputes as to the precise meaning and the greater^ or less importance in history of climate, of race, of economic factors, of individuality, of collectivity, of culture, of morality, and of in telligence; and also as to how teleology, im manence, providence, and so on, are to be understood in history. In these disputes there recur constantly the names of Buckle, of Taine, of Spencer, of Ranke, of Marx, of Lamprecht and of others. It is evident that those con troversies concern, not only the gnoseological nature of historical writing, but the system of the spirit and of the real, the conception of the world itself. The materialist and the spiritualist, the theist and the pantheist, will solve them differently. To write their history here would be to go beyond the boundaries of Logic and of the particular history of Logic, that we have set ourselves.
1 See above, Part II. Chap. IV., and the note concerning it.
IV THEORIES OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THOUGHT AND WORD AND FORMALIST LOGIC THE history of Logic depends very closely upon Relation the history of the Philosophy of language, or history of Logic } ^ } and that of the of ^Esthetic, understood as the philosophy of philos°Phy °f 1 A J language.
language and of expression in general. Every discovery concerning language throws new light upon the function of thought, which, surpassing language, employs it as an instrument, and there fore unites itself with language both negatively and positively. It belongs to the progress of the Philosophy of language, not less than to that of Logic, to have determined in a more exact manner the relations between thought- and ex pression, as also to have dissipated or begun the dissipation of empirical and formalist Logic. This Logic, deluding itself with the belief -that it was analysing thought, presents a series of mutilated and empty linguistic forms.
This error, which appeared very early in our 584 LOGIC PART western world, has spread during the centuries igic free of it.
^ formalism.
Indian Logic and yet dominates many minds; so true is this J that " Logic " is usually understood to mean just illogic or formalist Logic. We say our western world, because if Greece created and passed on the doctrine of logical forms, which was a mixture of thoughts materialized in words and of words become rigid in thoughts, another Logic is known, which, as it seems, developed outside the influence of Greek thought, and remained immune from the formalist error. This is Indian Logic, which is notably antiverbalist, though very inferior to that of Greece and of Europe in wealth and depth of concepts, and limited almost exclusively to the examination of the empirical concept or reasoning, of naturalistic induction or expectatio casuum similium. I ndian Logic studies the naturalistic syllogism in itself, as internal thought, distinguishing it from the syllogism for others, that is to say, from the more or less usual, but always extrinsic and accidental forms of com munication and dispute. It has not even a suspicion of the extravagant idea (which still vitiates our treatises) of a truth which is merely syllogistic and formalist, and which may be false in fact. It takes no account of the judgment, or rather it considers what is called judgment, and HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 585 what is really the proposition, as a verbal clothing of knowledge; it does not make the verbal dis tinctions of subject, copula and predicate; it does not admit classes of categorical and hypothetical, of affirmative and of negative judgments. All these are extraneous to Logic, whose object is the constant: knowledge considered in itself.1 It was a subject of enquiry and of disagree- Aristotelian Logic and ment, especially during the second half of last formalism. century, whether formalist Logic, the Logic of the schools, could legitimately be called Aristo telian. Some, among whom were Trendelenburg and Prantl, absolutely denied this, and wished to restore the genuine thought of Aristotle, opposing it to post-Aristotelian and mediaeval Logic. But they themselves were so enmeshed in logical formalism, that they were not capable of determining its peculiar character. The con trast between those two Logics, so far as it struck them, concerned secondary points. If the proper character of formalism consists in the confusion between thought and word, how are we to deny that Aristotle fell into this error, or that at any rate he set his foot upon the